Healthy and Sustainable choices

Healthy Choices

As one of the UK’s biggest supermarkets, we understand the important role we play in providing accessible, healthy choices for customers, and the impact these choices can have on the nation’s health.

New Health Strategy

In early 2024 we relaunched our health strategy, marking a new chapter in our long history of action on health, including being the first retailer to introduce front of pack traffic light labelling and the establishment of our Live Better icon, which signposts customers to the healthiest options.

We have partnered with the charity Nesta, an independent research organisation, who aims to help people live longer, healthier lives by halving the number of people with obesity in the UK. Nesta is on a mission to increase the average number of healthy years lived in the UK, while narrowing health inequalities.

Using the Government’s Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM), we have set out our ambition to improve the average sales weighted* health score of the food we sell, both branded and own-brand, year on year. In the NPM, points are allocated based on a product’s negative nutrients i.e. energy, saturated fat, sugar and salt and deducted for positive nutrients i.e. fibre, protein and % fruit, veg & nuts.

The lower the score, the healthier the product with products deemed ‘unhealthy’ (HFSS**) scoring above 1 (for drinks) or 4 (for food).

* Our Health Score is defined not only by the type of products we sell but also quantities sold (sales weighted) of said products. If we sell predominantly healthy products our business health score would be lower.

** High fat, salt and sugar

With Nesta’s support, we will measure score change according to a sales-weighted Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM) score. For each 0.1 reduction in this ‘Health Score’, Nesta estimates that, on average, over the next three years, the potential value to society could equate to £71m GBP per year, based on work by Frontier Economics for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

As we move into a new era with a clear target, we will be publishing our baseline and will agree the milestones to measure our performance against over the following months. Our previous health metrics will continue to be monitored internally as they all contribute to the improved Health Score target:

• Increase the number of Live Better Products.

• Grow Asda Plant Based Sales.

• Reduce red traffic lights on Asda products.

• Cartoon characters removed from HFSS2 own brand products.

The Health Menu

Our new Health Menu range offers nutritionist-approved meals that are not only affordable but focused on specific health benefits. The range has been designed so customers can eat more whole foods, try a plant-based diet or add more vegetables to their plate. The clear signposting of the benefits on the products aims to help customers make informed choices and understand the impact of these choices on their health and wellness

In 2023, we re-launched our Live Better icon and our portfolio of products stands at 876. Live Better was created to make healthy eating simple and for customers to see at a glance the healthiest choices across all Asda brands and ranges.

The Live Better icon is awarded to products that meet the below criteria:

• be non-high fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) in accordance with the UK’s 2004-2005 Nutrient Profiling Model

• have a defined nutritional benefit, as listed on the GB Nutrition and Health Claims Register*

• no red traffic lights (unless entirely driven by fruits, vegetables, nuts or oily fish)

• meet our nutritionists’ category specific criteria e.g., bread must be high in fibre.

Live Better products are aligned to The Eatwell Guide** which supports more sustainable eating patterns.

*A health claim is any statement about a relationship between food and health.

**The Eatwell Guide shows how much of what we eat overall should come from each food group to achieve a healthy, balanced diet

DID YOU KNOW?

Product Innovation

Feeding the nation means meeting the requirements of a range of diets and our chefs are continually developing new ranges to suit. Our Plant Based range, which is accredited by The Vegan Society, offers customers healthy, sustainable choices that are suitable for vegans.

DID YOU KNOW?

Product Innovation

Sustainable Choices

Sustainable choices is a key pillar of our broader ESG strategy, focussed on how we best support customers to make more sustainable choices when shopping with us. As part of this strategy, we have identified four strategic goals:-

Sustainable Choices

Packaging reduction, recyclability and recycled content

Our commitments and updated sustainable packaging targets for 2030

We still intend to drive the 2025 targets we committed to in the UK Plastic Pact, namely**: 100% recyclability of own brand packaging**.

In 2023, 96% (2022: 93%) of Asda branded packaging was recyclable, with an average recycled content of 28% (2022: 29%)

Some examples of plastic reduction in 2023:-

• Across our beef range we have reduced the plastic packaging on our steak trays and modified our packaging on beef mince. This delivered reduced packaging of 120 tonnes annually. This move also saw improvements to shelf life from nine days to 14 days on beef mince.

• Over 1.8 million lids of Just Essentials soft cheese now include 30% recycled content in packaging.

• We’ve also improved the recyclability of 200 million pieces of plastic annually by removing the colour milk caps on Asda branded fresh milk. Colourless plastic has higher demand as a recycled material, so this change will drive end markets for the caps after recycling.

Reinvigorating Refill

Over the past four years, our refill trial stores have taught us a lot about the complexities of scaling refillable packaging. We’ve achieved some success in-store, supported by collaboration with key suppliers and organisations such as WRAP and IGD. However, we have experienced operational issues and commercial challenges with our existing approach.

Our research showed that the key barriers which included cost, convenience, cleanliness, and perceived product quality have prevented customers from engaging with the refill proposition.

Moving forwards, we intend to deliver new, scalable refill and prefill trials that build on our learnings and improve customer uptake, operational feasibility and commercial viability.